


Of Cubs and Lions

by casuallyhuman



Series: Of Wolves and Lions [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-08-10 20:54:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20141833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/casuallyhuman/pseuds/casuallyhuman
Summary: She stares at her husband, who’s sipping wine, oblivious to her inner turmoil. It’s very late, now that she considers it. Two weeks late.“Tyrion?” She says softly.He reaches for the flagon on the table. “Hm?”“My moonblood is late.”He pours the wine, not registering her meaning. “Are you stressed again? Maybe you could take a day off. Rest.”She huffs gently. “Tyrion.”He looks at her for a moment, puzzled, and she can see the moment he realizes what she’s trying to say. “You mean—do you think—”





	Of Cubs and Lions

**Author's Note:**

> I was like, hey, why don't you give it a rest a couple months? You've just written a book on these two. Take a break. 
> 
> I literally couldn't do it. This ship is taking over my life.
> 
> Also, I'm now taking prompts on tumblr at rivers-doctor. It's because I'm trash. But send me a prompt for this ship, and I'll probably fill it. I'm bored as fuck lately. :)

Sansa stares at her plate, deep in thought.

There are two lemon cakes there, bright yellow against white porcelain. Taunting her.

She’s already _had_ two, is the issue. Normally that’s more than enough for her—any more than that and she just doesn’t enjoy them as much. Though, for some reason, lately, she’s craved lemon cakes terribly.

Tyrion’s voice breaks her reverie. “Just eat them, Sansa.”

She glances at her husband, who sits across the table watching her, then resumes her stare. “I shouldn’t.”

He sighs but humors her. “Why not?”

“I’ve already had two.” She reasons. _Gods_, but they look delicious.

“Then what’s a third?”

That logic _is_ rather sound.

She looks back up at him before tentatively reaching out and taking another. “When I grow to the size of an elephant, you’re not allowed to disavow me.”

He rolls his eyes, but it’s clear he’s amused. “Sansa, you could look like _Drogon_ and I wouldn’t disavow you.”

The response should placate her, but she can’t help herself when she pauses between bites to immaturely grumble, “Drogon is far prettier than an elephant.”

He laughs, eyes bright as he watches her, and she can’t help but smile in response. Her husband is _thoroughly_ besotted with her.

She won’t lie; she rather likes that: that she’s his whole world. If she couldn’t tell by the time he spent watching her while she slept (it’s quite a lot), by the constant availability of lemon cakes, by the incessant flow of gifts, she would certainly be able to tell by how often he _tells_ her. In the mornings when she wakes, when they have their evening walks, when they dine together, when he makes love to her when the rest of the castle has fallen to slumber.

Tyrion Lannister is in love with her, and she quite enjoys it.

It helps, of course, that she’s fallen in love with _him_ along the way.

He’s kind, witty, funny. He understands her in a way no one else has ever quite understood her before. She always looks forward to talking with him, and when they do they talk for hours, not even noticing the time passing. He knows what she’s thinking—because often he’s already thinking the same.

She thinks, now, she understands those lessons in love her mother had once given her.

Because she’d been right: love wasn’t quite something that came suddenly, at once: it stalked you, silently, there all along until it finally pounced and you _realized_ what it was, even if it had been there before. It was built, grew, slowly, over time until your lives, your thoughts were so intertwined you stopped thinking of yourself as separate entities, but as _one_. 

She’d thought, a year ago, on their first night together, that she’d finally discovered love. And, perhaps she hadn’t been _wrong_. She _had_ loved him then: just not like she loves him now. Every day she learns more about the man she calls her husband, and every day she finds another piece of him to adore.

When she’d finally understood _that_, she’d told him she wanted a child.

That was a month ago. They’ve been trying ever since.

The _trying_ is quite fun. Of course, it hasn’t been much different from their typical nights; ever since that fateful night when her husband introduced her to the pleasure found in a bed, they’ve both been eager in _that_ particular area of their marriage. He’s nothing if not experienced; Margaery had certainly been right about that. Sansa isn’t quite sure what a lover is _supposed_ to do, but still she thinks her husband is the best. He’s attentive, rough when she needs it, gentle when she needs it.

She’s stopped taking moon tea—a habit she’d formed again in the beginning of their marriage. Her mother told her, before she left for King’s Landing, of the signs of a babe. Sickness in the mornings (or days), swelling in the breasts—the lack of a moonblood.

She’s been watching for the signs—she hasn’t felt sick, and she doesn’t _think_ her breasts have changed. (Actually, they definitely haven’t. Tyrion would’ve noticed.) Her moonblood _is_ late—though it’s never been particularly regular, so she hasn’t given much thought to it.

_Wait—how late _is_ it? _

She stares at her husband, who’s sipping wine, oblivious to her inner turmoil. It’s very late, now that she considers it. Two weeks late.

“Tyrion?” She says softly.

He reaches for the flagon on the table. “Hm?”

“My moonblood is late.”

He pours the wine, not registering her meaning. “Are you stressed again? Maybe you could take a day off. Rest.”

She huffs gently. “_Tyrion_.”

He looks at her for a moment, puzzled, and she can see the moment he realizes what she’s trying to say. “You mean—do you think—”

She bites her lip. “I’m not sure. But _two weeks_—that’s longer than normal.”

He grins, delight dancing in his eyes. “Already, really? We’ve only been trying for a month.”

She represses a smile. “My mother did like to give me lessons on the Tully fertility.” 

He gets out of his chair to round the table and take her hand. “This—this is _incredible_. _You’re_ incredible.” He kisses her cheek, then her nose, then her lips, unable to stop smiling.

“Well,” She says, between kisses, “we don’t know yet. I might not be—”

He pauses, pulling back just far enough to beam down at her. “You might not be. But you _might_ be.”

She smiles. “I might be.”

\--

She is.

\--

Sansa’s heard horror stories about pregnancy all her life.

Most of her mother’s weren’t so bad. Carrying Rickon, however, had been difficult. Her mother had always said it was because she was too old when she’d fallen pregnant—past her thirtieth name day. Pregnancies that late were bound to be hard on the body.

Sansa is lucky. She has no sickness with her first child, her body doesn’t revolt at the idea (some red marks appear with the stretch of her belly, but not many), her hair doesn’t fall out—really, the only _possible_ downside is how badly she wants her husband.

(She wants him quite a lot. Almost constantly—they spend so much time in bed their servants will no longer come in without knocking, no matter the time of day. Tyrion doesn’t seem to mind.)

She also gets incredibly strong cravings for food—lemon cake is only one such craving. She demands burnt mutton, even pigeon pie now—something she’d always hated before. Now she can’t seem to get enough.

Her nose has also become incredibly sensitive, to the point that she’s awakened by the smell of breakfast coming in the morning, that she demands Tyrion bathe thrice a week rather than twice.

He acquiesces willingly; he does nearly everything she asks of him, when her belly starts to grow.

He’s fascinated by the slight bump when he first notices it. He’s rather well acquainted with her body—one could argue more acquainted than _she_ is, and he spots the slight swell of her stomach a few weeks after she notices her missing moonblood.

“It’s just _here_,” He tells her one night after he makes love to her, tracing her bare lower belly with his fingertips.

She looks down, examining the area he’s outlining. “I still don’t see it.”

He sighs, brows knitting as he stares at the spot intently. “No, I’m sure of it. Your stomach is very flat, Sansa, when you’re lying down. But this—” He pokes her stomach gently. “is _not_ flat.”

She looks at it again. She really can’t tell much of a difference, especially in the low candlelight, but she nods, humoring him. “Maybe.”

He rests his chin on her thigh and stills his hand, resting it on her bare skin and smoothing his thumb over it. “We made this. We made a _babe_, Sansa.”

She smiles and buries a hand in his curls, a habit she developed early in their marriage. “We did, didn’t we?”

He drops a kiss to her leg. “I hope she’s half as beautiful as you are.”

“She?” She laughs. “That’s rather presumptuous, isn’t it?”

He crawls up to lie beside her, propping his head up on her elbow. “Not at all. I’m quite sure, you see: our first will be a girl.” He kisses her brow. “She’ll have my wit and your eyes and she’ll be _quite_ a force to be reckoned with.”

“Have it all figured out, do you?”

“Well, I do have a gorgeous wife who’s _far_ too good for me sprawled in _my_ bed, pregnant with _my_ child. I must have _something_ figured out.”

She _hmms_ at him, lacing her fingers through his. “Well, I think it’ll be a boy.”

He snorts. “Why would you think that?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. I just do.”

He drops down to kiss her. “Well, _I_ think it’ll be a girl.”

\--

It’s a boy.

\--

The labor is rather awful, Tyrion thinks.

He panics when her water first breaks. Once moment she’s sewing a lion onto a blanket, and the next there’s liquid flooding the floor, and Sansa’s looking at him, wide eyes speaking to her terror, and all his worries about childbirth, about his _wife_ resurface quite suddenly and he nearly regrets doing this to her.

He paces by her bedside in the beginning of the labor, and when she first starts to shout in pain he nearly falls apart, worrying behind the maester’s shoulder and asking far too many questions. He won’t leave the room, despite the maester’s repeated insistence that he do so.

Sansa gives him one look (more of a glare, really), hair clinging to her face, tears streaming down her cheeks, and he shoves the old man aside to take her hand. As if he could leave his _wife_.

The rest of it is terrible.

So terrible, in fact, that at one point Tyrion is nearly convinced that it will kill her; that childbirth will take her from him, but he’s only just _gotten_ her, and if he loses her now he doesn’t know what will happen. What he’ll do.

Still, he’s calm for her, keeps his own tears at bay because she’s being _far_ too strong for him to start blubbing like a child.

Sansa screams and screams, nearly breaks his fingers when the maester instructs her to push. She curses at him, at the maester, at the gods—tells him he’s never touching her again, that she’s getting her _own_ bed after this. He grits his teeth and says nothing; he’s no idiot, and he accidentally catches a glimpse, once, when the head starts to crown, and he thinks that perhaps she’s not _over_reacting.

(He can bear a few broken fingers, because the screams go on for nearly an hour.)

But finally, _finally_, high-pitched cries crack the air, the maester is grinning, and Sansa stops shouting, and Tyrion slumps onto his knees to the floor in relief.

“It’s a boy,” The man says, lifting the babe—_Tyrion’s_ babe—and his heart nearly stops.

The maester takes a knife and severs the cord quickly, wiping the child down quickly. “Here you are,” He says, offering the babe to Tyrion.

“Me?” Tyrion says, dazed, unmoving.

“Yes, you.” Sansa groans then, loudly, and the maester all but shoves the child in his arms. “Just _take_ him.”

So he does, awkwardly arranging his arms to hold his son (his _son_!) until he’s comfortable, attempting to gently bounce him. He has quite the voice, his son, and his throaty cries are nearly deafening until he quiets.

“Just the afterbirth, now,” The maester’s telling Sansa, and everything’s over rather quickly after that.

The maester gives strict instructions to Tyrion to keep Sansa abed for the next few days and tells her to send for him if she has any trouble feeding the child (she’s already insisted she won’t have a wet nurse), then leaves them alone. 

Sansa looks up at him, face writ with exhaustion, hands out, and Tyrion places their babe in his arms.

His wife has none of the trouble he’d had arranging him, settling his head neatly in the crook of her arm.

“_Oh_,” She breathes out as she examines the child, touching his cheek with one finger.

He perches beside her on the bed, observing the now-sleeping babe with her. “He _is_ rather perfect, isn’t he?”

Sansa rubs a gentle hand over the light blonde hairs covering the small head. “What will we call him?”

Tyrion presses a kiss to her cheek. “I suspect we’ll be naming him after your father, won’t we?”

His wife looks up at him, biting her lip. “We never talked about it.”

“But you want to.” He says, and it’s more of a statement than a question, because he _knows_ his wife now, and this is what she wants.

“I—yes.” She looks back down at their child. “Now that I see him, I think it’s perfect. Eddard Lannister.”

He wraps an arm around her. “_Ned_ Lannister.”

She smiles, but pauses. “Do _you_ like it?” She asks, voice steady, and he knows if he said no, if he suggested a different name, she’d agree in a second. Because she is ever the lady, his wife, and he’s sure she was taught that the lord of the house names the heir. And even now, he’s not quite yet convinced her that she has the same say as he does here, in their bed, in their _home_.

“I do,” He says.

She’s right—their child _does_ look like a Ned.

\--

Sansa takes to motherhood like a fish takes to water.

It’s Tyrion’s new favorite activity—watching Sansa with their son. He loved her before, of course, but seeing her with little Ned—it’s a whole new side to the woman he loves, and he can’t help but feel like the luckiest man alive to get to watch her find it.

Ned sleeps in their chambers in the beginning, and that’s a difficult adjustment—waking every few hours to blood-curdling cries. But Sansa, somehow, always knows just what to do—whether he needs a change, to belch, to feed. After the first week, she insists that he cries differently, depending on what he wants, that it’s not difficult to tell.

(Tyrion has absolutely no idea what she’s talking about. He just does as he’s told—so far that’s working splendidly.)

He has a difficult time in the beginning, working through the day. He just wants to be with his wife and child—the two days after the birth with them didn’t give him much time to get acquainted with his son.

So he tends to take several more breaks during the day now than is _strictly_ warranted. His breaks for lunch stretch two hours rather than half; small breaks to take a piss now necessitate visiting their chambers, which nearly always end with _Sansa_ shoving him out the door when he hovers.

“I don’t really have that much to do,” He tries one day when she tells him she can handle Ned, that he should return to his study.

“If I remember correctly there’s a large trade market opening in Lannisport in a week that’s still unplanned,” She replies evenly, blue eyes all-knowing, a twinkle giving away her amusement.

He waves it off. “We have a steward for these things.”

She breathes out heavily through her nose, brow creased, and stands with the help of a bedpost. “Alright, then,” She shrugs on a dressing gown over her shift.

“What are you doing?”

She looks over her shoulder at him. “_One_ of us has to be overseeing this city, husband. If it isn’t you, it’ll have to be me.”

“Absolutely not!” He protests, setting the babe down gently before rising to stop her. “You’re not supposed to get out of bed for two weeks!”

“I am _not_ an invalid,” She says crossly, tying her gown. “And the maester said _a few days_. That doesn’t mean a fortnight.”

“Either way, it’s only been _three_ days. You could still hurt yourself.” Tyrion stills her hands. “Back to bed, Sansa.”

She glares. “Are you planning to run this castle if I do?”

“_Yes_, by the gods, just get back in bed!”

She complies and he breathes a sigh of relief. This isn’t the first time she’s tried to get back to work; the first day after her pregnancy she’d heard of a possible food shortage in the city and tried to leave the Keep.

Sansa just doesn’t _like_ staying still.

She rearranges her blankets and then folds her arms. “You can see your son, Tyrion, but you can’t abandon our people. Not when I can’t help.”

\--

Two days later, he has a page move his things to the desk in his room.

It seems a decent compromise.

\--

Ned is an adventurous little boy from the beginning. He has an impulsiveness in him that reminds Tyrion of Jaime, but he also somehow has an understanding of right and wrong from a young age that they both know came from his namesake.

Tyrion’s love for Ned is strong, it’s true; stronger than any love he’s ever felt for a child. But Ned—Ned is his _mother’s_ child, and Sansa loves their boy _fiercely_, with a sort of motherly protection that (almost) reminds Tyrion of Cersei.

And she’s just so good at being a mother, being a parent—sometimes he feels out of his depth.

“How do you do it?” He asks her one day as she feeds him.

“Do what?” She asks, looking poised even with a child at her breast.

He waves his hand, gestures at Ned. “You always know what to do, how to please him. How?”

Her brow furrows and she idly traces their son’s head. “I don’t _always_ know what to do.”

He laughs a little. “You’re just very good at being a mother, Sansa.”

She takes his hand. “_You’re_ very good at being a father.”

\--

Ned has just had his second name-day when Sansa shakes him awake gently one morning.

He blinks up at her, squinting against the encroaching sunlight. “Good morning?”

She props herself up on her elbow. “I think we should have another one.”

He’s just woken up, so his mind isn’t quite working well enough to understand. “What?”

She huffs. “Another _child_, Tyrion.”

He stares at her. “Am I the only one that remembers what you said having the _first_ one?”

“Well, yes,” She concedes, laying back down beside him. “But Ned is two now. He needs someone to play with. And I want a girl.”

“I don’t know, Sansa,” He says, because the first labor was terrifying enough. Sansa was alright, their babe was healthy, but they didn’t get a guarantee that it would happen again. This one could come out like _him_, could tear her apart from her insides. She could bleed out in their bed, and he’d be left alone with two children and no idea what to do.

This must all be obvious on his face, because she takes his hand and squeezes it. “I’ll be fine. I was fine the first time, really.”

He looks at her, brow raised, and she laughs. “It hurt, but they’re supposed to. I wasn’t in any danger.”

He sighs, still unconvinced. “But you could be this time. “

She sidles closer to him and buries her nose in his neck, wraps an arm around his torso. “_Please_?”

He sighs, but can’t help but pull her closer to him. “I’ll _think_ about it. I’m not making any promises.”

\--

She’s pregnant again within the year.

\--

Jo is so wild that neither of them even thinks about another child for _years_. 

She has all of Ned’s impulsiveness, but she has a Stark stubbornness and a yearning for freedom that makes her _quite_ the handful. She’s Arya, Sansa claims, a smaller, _faster_ Arya, and when said woman gifts her a dagger (that Johanna will _always_ carry), the matching looks on their faces convinces Tyrion of it.

Jo is six when Tyrion says something, after she’s terrorized the Keep’s guards in the middle of the night. “This is the last one, right?”

“_Definitely_.” Sansa agrees.

\--

It’s not.

\--

Bronn is _remarkable_.

His very _existence_ was remarkable—Sansa had been taking moon tea for ages, and somehow she’d fallen pregnant. That’s _still_ a bit of a mystery.

His birth was the worst. Daenerys and Jon had just arrived outside the keep when a servant had rushed to tell Tyrion that it was happening, that Sansa was having the child.

_That_ process took over a day; it’d started at midday, then lasted until the next afternoon. Sansa passed out twice from exhaustion.

Tyrion never left her side.

Bronn was born with dark blue eyes and a scream that frightened the horses outside. _Drogon_ took to the skies when he entered the world, as if he knew that another dragon had entered the world.

(Tyrion doesn’t find out until later that that’s what Bronn is. A dragon.)

Sansa is thoroughly exhausted by the time Tyrion places Bronn in her arms, and she only manages to feed him a few minutes before she gently pushes the child to her husband. “I need to sleep,” She says, eyes drooping.

He doesn’t begrudge her that. _He_ needs to sleep.

He holds the child for a few hours, but soon enough even he has to pass him off to Jon and Daenerys, who are all too delighted to watch the newest addition to the family.

“He’ll be fine,” Jon says, cradling the boy’s head. “Get some rest.”

Tyrion nods, and returns to their chambers. He thinks his wife is asleep when he climbs in beside her on their bed, but she shifts when he draws the cover.

He shushes her when she grumbles, and she takes his hand, eyes still closed.

He chuckles lightly. “Want another?”

She swats at him blindly, pushing her face to his chest. “_You_, my lord husband, are _never_ touching me again.”

\--

That was a lie.

**Author's Note:**

> So? :) How was that?


End file.
